Will Patent Trend Favoring Corporate-Owned IP Stifle Innovation?

U.S. firms are making ever more expansive claims to their employees’ intellectual work – in some cases demanding employees pre-assign their IP – and there has been a resulting decrease in inventor-owned patents. Now, individuals own just 10 percent of all patents, down from 25 percent two decades ago, with the rest belonging to companies, and that number may decrease further now that the America Invents Act’s first-to-file provision is in effect. How will a system skewed so much in favor of corporations over individual inventors impact innovation? Not well, University of San Diego law school professor Orly Lobel writes in a New York Times op-ed. “A world where what is fair and what is law diverge so markedly raises a number of important moral, legal and economic questions, the most basic and important of which is: How does a reality in which we own so little of what we create affect our drive to make something new and original?”